The stipulation that will please many
students is that neither university system raise tuition during the next four
years, at the risk of losing half a billion in funding from California.

Brown is effectively asking the
universities to choose between autonomy and money: “By meeting Brown’s goals
over the next four years, the University of California and the California State
University systems could see their funding approach levels not reached since
before the recession.But the
institutions have prided themselves on their relative independence from state government,
and Brown’s proposal has been greeted coldly by university officials
unaccustomed to taking orders from politicians”.

I’m still not entirely sure how I feel
about Brown’s plan (it will be nice to read the document itself when it emerges),
but there is a certain irony in the hostility from UC bureaucrats, whose gripe
over the past decade has been that the state is an unstable partner, and that
the funding situation makes it difficult to do any kind of long-term planning,
or to commit to any fee structure for more than a year at a time.

Brown’s plan begins to undercut what had
been UCOP’s primary excuse for the inexorable tuition hikes over which its
growing cadre of bureaucrats have presided in recent years.It would give them financial stability for
four years in respect to state funding—more than the system has had for a long
time.It would give them higher levels
of funding than the system has seen in some time (while also increasing the
number of students coming into the system, making for a potentially troublesome
formula).And it provides some answer to
the criticism that the state is a poor partner.Brown’s heart is, I think, in the right place on this issue (and
look!!I’ve managed to say something
nice about the Governor!!).

UC will be left looking very
hypocritical if it spurns this offer.It
might try to argue that Brown’s plan violates institutional autonomy and the
integrity of the system’s charter for independent research (and it would be
right), but it would also expose the administration’s desire for tuition
increases for what it really is: not a “necessary evil”, but instead a systematic
attempt to change the nature of the University, subvert its public character,
and introduce unethical market logic into an institution that exists to serve
Californians rather than market imperatives.

That said, it is not clear that Brown’s
proposals would do anything to reverse the march towards a private model of
education whereby the burden of funding falls largely on individual students
and their families, ameliorated not by serious public reinvestment and
collective support out of a recognition of the value of a democratic system of
higher education, but rather by the ability of the University to scratch
together scholarship money.

Moreover, the Times suggests that much new funding might go to meet “higher costs
for pensions and healthcare” and would “leave little for steps that could
improve graduation rates, such as hiring more instructors to offer more classes
and more counsellors and tutors to help students plan their course work better”.The paper also quotes Cal State officials
noting that keeping tuition high and requiring faster progress to degree
completion are irreconcilable goals; the latter, by placing a greater burden on
students, forces them to spread their efforts across work and school thinner,
preventing them from finishing in a shorter period of time.

One difficulty with the Governor’s
gamble is that he doesn’t have sole control over state funding.The legislature will have to review his
proposals, and there is a good chance that the university systems will seek to
outflank Brown by lobbying Senate and Assembly members who are eager to curry
favour with the system and take the path of least resistance.There must also be serious questions about
whether, absent structural reform to the state’s mangled political structure—a structure
which in its present form prevents long-term investment in or planning by
public institutions—Brown could, even with support from the legislature, commit
to a medium-term plan of this nature.

But I have to give the Governor
credit.He is trying to start up a
conversation which has been stalled for some years, and which is central to the
wellbeing of California’s civil society and success as a polity.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.